The safest and most natural way for a baby to be born vaginally is head first. As your due date approaches, your baby will begin to turn “upside down” in preparation for birth.
A baby is in a breech position when they present feet first or sitting “right side up”. In 90 percent of cases, a breech baby will have to be delivered via C-section [1].
When should I worry about the baby’s position?
Around week 37, the baby has grown so much that they can’t turn; there is simply not enough room in the womb. In such cases, doctors may try an external cephalic version (ECV), a procedure in which your doctor will try to turn the baby by placing their hands on your abdomen and manipulating their position [1]. The procedure can be painful.
At week 28 of pregnancy, one in four babies is breech. It decreases to 15 percent of babies by week 32 and goes down to three to four percent at the time of labor [2]. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of waiting for the baby to turn.
I don’t want to wait that long. Can I do something else to help my baby turn?
When a doctor turns a baby at the hospital with the proper equipment and precautions, the success rate is 86 percent. But there are other alternatives. Studies show that methods like yoga and acupuncture have a success rate of 65 percent [3].
Alternative methods can be an option not only to reduce anxiety regarding the baby’s health but also because they can be more cost-effective than waiting until late in the pregnancy and utilizing hospital resources. A simulation showed that acupuncture performed at week 33 on an expectant mother with a breech baby yielded a 20 percent increased chance of the baby turning versus doing nothing. Researchers noted that the cost of stimulating a pregnant woman’s pinky toes (via moxibustion) was significantly lower than the cost of a C-section [4].
How do these alternative methods work?
Most of the studies on acupuncture focused on moxibustion. Moxa is a cone or stick made of ground-up mugwort leaves that is burned at or near acupuncture points. It is believed to work by stimulating the adrenal cortex and changing blood levels of estrogen and prostaglandin, which can increase the sensitivity of the uterus and make the baby more active, possibly leading them to move to a head-first position [3].
Another option is to apply ginger paste to your little toes at night, which can make them feel warm and entice the baby to move. There are no reported risks to this method [3].
Doctors and midwives may also recommend yoga poses such as a bridge, where you lie down on your back and then raise your pelvis towards the ceiling while using the rest of your body for support. However, there is no evidence yoga poses have either a positive or negative effect on breech presentation [3].
